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Lewis Hamilton has proceeded to clear the air over supposed tensions between him and his Ferrari engineer after speculations of the same during the F1 Monaco GP race weekend. The race in the principality was not the best for the 7x F1 champion. He had a penalty going into the race, which meant that he was starting the race in P7.
The driver made progress after the first pitstop and was in P5 heading to the next phase of the race. Unfortunately, beyond that, there was no progress from Hamilton in the race. The Ferrari driver was around 12 seconds behind Charles Leclerc when Fernando Alonso first pitted, giving him cleaner air in front of him. That, however, didn't change things to a large extent for the Brit.
As the race progressed, the driver continued to fall behind the top four drivers. Coupled with being stuck behind the backmarkers, Lewis Hamilton was close to a minute behind the race leader. There was an untelevised moment that caught the eye of a lot of people and raised a few questions.
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After the race, Hamilton was seen questioning his race engineer, "Are you upset with me or something?" on the team radio, with no reply coming from the other side. While Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur dismissed suggestions of any friction between the duo, the doubts remained.
Heading into the F1 Spanish GP, Lewis Hamilton has moved to dismiss these doubts by clarifying that he had a great relationship with his engineer. He told media, including RacingNews365:
“There is a lot of speculation, most of it is BS. We have a great relationship. He's been amazing to work with, he's a great guy. He's working so hard, we both are. We don't always get it right every weekend. We have disagreements like everyone does in relationships, but we work through them. We're both in it together."
He added:
“We both want to win a championship together. We're both working towards lifting the team up. It's just all noise, and we don't really pay any attention to it. It can continue if you want, but it doesn't make any difference to the job that we're trying to do.”
We're constantly learning more and more about each other: Lewis Hamilton
It has only been eight races this season where the 7x F1 champion has worked with a new race engineer. It also needs to be kept in mind that the Ferrari driver was in a partnership with his former engineer at Mercedes, Pete Bonnington, for a long time, and such a change takes time to adapt to. He said (via the aforementioned source):
“Our relationship is great, there are no problems. We're constantly learning more and more about each other. We're constantly adapting to the way both of us like to work. He's worked with lots of different drivers before. We don't have any problems."
Lewis Hamilton would be hoping for a better run at Barcelona now, as he's been with the team for a decent period. Now is the time to step things up and get better results compared to Charles Leclerc.
